Hilali, 'the Thick Sheik' is back.

Muslim cleric Taj Din al-Hilali, dubbed ‘the Thick Sheik” by Australian media and the ‘ Australian Muslim’s sir Les Patterson’ by Catallaxy says the Bible "mandates" the wearing of the veil by Christian women.

Sheik Hilali, lost his job as mufti of Australia after comparing scantily clad women to uncovered meat, has apparently learned nothing and now claims that the Bible and the Koran make similar demands of a woman's modesty.

"Through this I hope to raise awareness and understanding and eliminate apprehensions and misunderstandings about the veil," he writes.

Sheik Hilali also says the Virgin Mary is often depicted with a veil covering her head.

The claims are made in a book, “The Legitimacy of the Veil for Women of the Scripture - Evidence of the Veil in the Bible,” (Sounds like a nice bit of light reading for a wet afternoon.)

This is a report on the guy in person.


I have written about this idiot before: -
Sydney-based Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali alluded to the infamous Sydney gang rapes, suggesting the attackers were not entirely to blame.

While not specifically referring to the rapes, brutal attacks on four women for which a group of young Lebanese men received long jail sentences, Sheik Hilali said there were women who "sway suggestively" and wore make-up and immodest dress ... "and then you get a judge without mercy and gives you 65 years".

"But the problem, but the problem all began with who?" he asked.

In the religious address on adultery to about 500 worshippers in Sydney last month, Sheik Hilali said: "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?

"The uncovered meat is the problem."

The sheik then said: "If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred."

He said women were "weapons" used by "Satan" to control men.

"It is said in the state of zina (adultery), the responsibility falls 90 per cent of the time on the woman. Why? Because she possesses the weapon of enticement."

This is not the first such statement of this nature by a cleric, in Fairfax Digital from May 2005, I found the following: -

Liverpool's Sheik Faiz Mohamad did himself no favours trying to justify his comments that women who were raped only had themselves to blame because they dressed immodestly.

His comments at a lecture to more than 1000 people last month at Bankstown Town Hall caused a storm of anger after they were revealed in The Sun-Herald last Sunday.

"A victim of rape every minute somewhere in the world. Why? No one to blame but herself," he said. "She displayed her beauty to the entire world. She degraded herself by being an object of sexual desire."

During the week, Sydney-born Faiz, 34, attempted to justify himself in an interview on Channel Nine, but only dug a deeper hole.

"What I meant is a lady, if she wears any kind of alluring clothes or adorning [sic] clothes or clothes that beautify her beauty, she is eligible for rape." Eligible for rape?

To be fair to the Islamic Community there appeared in the same article: -
A group of more than a dozen Muslim organisations issued a collective statement objecting to Faiz's statements about rape. Sydney lawyer Irfan Yusef, self-described Aussie Mossie (Muslim), wrote an article for The Sydney Morning Herald speaking for "most in the Muslim community [who] feel revulsion at his comments".

The Islamic Sydney website has been full of lively discussion of the topic all week, with any attempts to justify the sheik's comments soundly rebuffed. A poll on the website found that 87. 6 per cent of respondents (of a total of 412) disagreed with: "The comment made by Sheik Faiz that a woman that dresses provocatively becomes eligible for rape?"

The problem I have with this is of course the other 12.4%, though some of this is no doubt influenced by the fact that the speaker is a religious leader and in this faith the adherrents are not inclined to think for themselves.

It's worth remembering what the American scholar of Islam Daniel Pipes said, on a visit to Sydney three years ago, about combating militant Islam.

First, he warned of the need to rebuff incremental radical Islamic encroachments on our Western secular society, such as any attempt to limit a woman's right to wear whatever she wants.

"If there are two ways which are reconcilable - the militant Islam way and the Australian way - you will need to assert the Australian way."